As part of their ongoing publishing programme, the Joint Contracts Tribunal (JCT) released the first batch of their ‘2016’ contracts towards the end of June 2016. This included the Minor Works (MW) and the Minor Works with Contractor’s Design (MWD). This was followed at the end of September 2016 by the Design and Build Contract (DB) and the Standard Building Contract in November 2016.

So what’s new? There’s a mixture of consolidation and new content in the two new MW contracts.

Some updating has come about as a result of the incorporation of some amendments issued since the contracts were last republished in 2011. This includes Amendment 1:2015, (which picked up changes resulting from the introduction of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015), and also the JCT Public Sector Supplement: 2011 – ‘Fair Payment, Transparency and Building Information Modelling’.

As noted in their earlier press release, JCT have made some alterations to the payment and insurance provisions, with the intention of making both easier to manage.

The payment section has been reviewed and streamlined, with the introduction of the concept of interim valuation dates, and the removal of the two-monthly intervals between payments after practical completion, to make the contract better match the ‘Construction Act’ provisions.

The insurance provisions have also been revised, with the intention of making them more reflective of the options available in the marketplace.

What about NBS content?

NBS Preliminaries/ Project Management

Content for the JCT Minor Works Building Contracts has been reviewed and amended for inclusion in all of the NBS specification tools; NBS Binders and Discs, NBS Building, NBS Scheduler and NBS Create subscribers received updates in mid to late July. The A20 sections in NBS Landscape Preliminaries have been updated to reflect the 2016 editions.

Updates to NBS Building preliminaries and NBS Create project management sections for the JCT Design and Build (DB) 2016 Contract have been issued in November 2016. (NB. Preliminaries for the DB Contract are only available as part of the NBS ‘full service’ library, so do not appear in NBS Domestic, NBS Landscape, NBS Scheduler or Building Abridged or Minor Works libraries).

Preliminaries / project management sections have also been updated to reflect the JCT Standard Building Contract were published in November 2016, and the JCT Intermediate Building Contracts (ID and ICD) 2016, which were published in December 2016.

SBCC are in the process of updating their range of contracts for use in Scotland. MW/ Scot, MWD/ Scot and DB/ Scot were published in early 2017 and NBS Binders and Discs, NBS Building, NBS Landscape, NBS Scheduler and NBS Create have been updated to reflect these changes. Customers will see updates from April through to July 2017. We are in liaison with SBCC regarding their dates for SBC/WW/ Scot, SBC/AQ/Scot and SBC/XQ/Scot contracts and will update NBS content as soon as possible after their publication.

NB. Preliminaries for the JCT/SBCC 'SBC' and 'DB' Contracts are only available as part of the NBS 'full service' library so do not appear in NBS Domestic, NBS Landscape, NBS Scheduler or NBS Building Abridged or Minor Works libraries.

JCT have now released the next batch of '2016' contracts - Constructing Excellence (CE), Framework Agreement (FA), Prime Cost (PCC), Major Projects (MP) and Measured Term (MTC). We hope to have updated Preliminaries/Project Management sections for these contracts available shortly, as well as for the equivalent Scottish versions, once these are published.

For those who subscribe to NBS Landscape, you will be aware that JCLI use JCT documents as the basis of their own landscape contracts.

We are in discussion with JCLI and will update the related NBS content as soon as possible after publication.

NBS DomesticSpecification

Preliminaries sets for JCT MW and MWD contracts are included in NBS Domestic Specification. An update to the content was issued in June. It is anticipated that Preliminaries sets for MW/Scot and MWD Scot will be added in due course.

Contract Administration

Template forms for use with the administration of JCT contracts are produced by RIBA Publishing.

‘RIBA’ forms for use with ‘2016’ editions of JCT Standard, Intermediate, Minor Works and Design and Build contracts (all variants), have now been incorporated into NBS Contract Administrator, while paper versions of those forms may be ordered from the RIBA bookshop.

Users of the previous ‘2011’ editions of JCT should use the corresponding ‘2011’ versions of the RIBA forms, and these continue to be supported within NBS Contract Administrator.

Summary

We are working hard to keep NBS tools and services up to date with the very latest versions of contracts.

A note on NEC contracts

NEC have announced that their ‘NEC4’ suite of documents will be issued in June 2017. We intend to update NBS Preliminaries/ Project Management sets to reflect the changes once these contracts are available.

Retentions have traditionally been imposed to ensure that the contractor properly completes the activities required of them under the contract. We explore how retentions are administered and how they manifest across various forms of contract.